Sunday, June 25, 2017

Elon Musk is recognised for many revolutionary ideas, but his new investment could really move development forwards into a positive future for the young generation.

He is currently funding a project called the Global Learning XPRIZE, which is helping children in Tanzania to learn to read and write. With a $15 million investment, Musk is hoping to progress the teaching of skills that are considered basic in many parts of the developed world, such as reading, writing and arithmetic, to around 260 million children who would otherwise not be able to access these skills throughout their life.

According to recent reports, the humanitarian project is planning on running throughout 150 villages across Tanzania, where each one will be given Pixel C tablets, which have been provided by Google. This software has been specially designed by a variety of teams for the XPrize competition, and aims to aid children between the ages of seven to ten in their formal education.

X-PRIZE have chosen 11 semi-finalist software creators from 198 entrants back in 2014. The semi-finalists are currently developing their unique software in the hope of winning the overall competition in September, where five finalists will be chosen and awarded with a sum of $1 million, before their software is taken to be tested in Tanzania.

Further to this, a period of 18 months of software testing in Tanzania will commence, and whichever educational tools see the most improvement in the children studying, compared to a control group, will then win $10 million.

The children taking part in the live testing of the revolutionary software have never received any teaching before, and all live very far from any schools, meaning that formal education would otherwise have been impossible for them.